Brinkley, AR

Brinkley was born as a railroad town in 1872, carrying the name of Robert Campbell Brinkley, the Memphis railroad promoter behind the line that opened the town. The city grew as a transportation and farm center, and its later natural-history story comes from the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, the closest refuge to Brinkley. In 2004, an ivory-billed woodpecker was reported near town after the bird had been thought extinct for decades. That report put Brinkley on birders’ maps. The local read is rail, roads, Delta farmland, and one very famous maybe-sighting.